Today is National Sickie Day

The first Monday in February is the day workers in the UK are most likely to call in sick – the National Sickie Day. The cold weather, post-Christmas credit card bills and the long months ahead before summer and holidays all contribute to many employees deciding to stay in bed on this day. Craig Jackson from Birmingham City University explains that based on epidemiological data collected by the Office for National Statistics, Confederation of British Industry, the UK labour force survey statistics, the first Monday in February has, for the past five years, seen a significant spike in sickness absence, with between 300,000 to 370,000 workers absent from work.

The National Sickie Day gets a lot of coverage in the press. The Telegraph reports that the cost to the economy in lost work and business opportunities, the cost of salaries and overtime payments, could be more than £32 million, according to business advisers ELAS.

The Metro also commented on the topic and quoted Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University who has said that “the ‘National Sickie Day’ may seem like a bit of a joke with some of these wild excuses, but there are some serious underlying reasons hiding beneath the surface”.

ITV announced that, according to a survey done for Daybreak, almost one third of working adults pulled a sickie and men have clocked up more sick days per year than women They also list the main reasons for pulling a sickie from the survey respondents.

Some even applaud the National Sickie Day with Conversations blog site stating that “given how hard we work, and all the unpaid overtime we put in, National Sickie Day can almost be viewed as a dark embrace of British employee truculence, entitlement, awkwardness and down-right bolshiness that workers in other European countries must surely envy. We should celebrate it.”

You can decide for yourself whether to celebrate or condemn the National Sickie Day but if you want to find out what the impact of absence to your business is on this day – or any other day, for that matter – join our customers who use Engage to monitor and manage employee absence.